


Forgiveness

by hearmerory



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hell, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Lucifer, King of Hell, Light BDSM, Lucifer Fall, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) is Bad at Feelings, Praise Kink, Pre-Cannon, Punishment, protective Maze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23023726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearmerory/pseuds/hearmerory
Summary: He hadn’t been quite right for a while now. He hadn’t come to quash demon rebellions with her. He hadn’t eaten, or slept. They hadn’t even fucked in weeks. This happened, sometimes, and all Maze knew was how to bring him back.
Relationships: Mazikeen & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 67





	Forgiveness

He hadn’t been quite right for a while now. It had started with not wanting to join Maze in breaking up one of the minor demon rebellions. He’d nodded his approval of her battle plan, and waved her away, his wings sinking slightly.

He hadn’t wanted to spar with her after she came back, either. They always spent a few hours fighting each day, keeping them sharp and supple. They were overdue for hand to hand combat, which was their favorite because it always devolved eventually into pleasure seeking. Swordplay just didn’t have the same potential for arousal.

Usually, her King would eat every couple of days. He always complained about the food Hell could provide, but he ate it anyway, washing it down with alcohol he inevitably scorned as swill. But he hadn’t eaten for longer than Maze could remember.

He hadn’t let her groom his wings in months, and they were covered in dirt and ash, even though he had barely left his throne. Occasionally, his wings would shake like a dog, and a cloud of dust would settle around him, coating his skin instead. He remained still, staring at the wall, his chin cradled in one hand, elbow resting on the throne.

Maze knew these moods, and she hated them. She loved him when he was angry, when he was quashing rebellion at her side, when he was drawing out human desires and twisting them to crush the guilty souls trapped in his domain. She loved the fire that lit his eyes when he was angry. She loved the purity of his laughter and the mischievous grin that covered his face when they sparred together. She loved the desperation and the pleasure that swelled visibly inside him when they played and fucked.

But she hated these long, listless days of brooding he sometimes indulged in. When he’d refuse to take any part in the running of his own dominion. Refuse to speak more than necessary, refuse to play or fight or fuck. She missed him, on those days.

But she also knew what he needed. Hundreds of thousands of years, they had been together. She knew what he needed to get his focus back, to regain himself. They had found out through eons of experimentation, with him as a fairly useless guide even to his own feelings, and her overzealous bloodthirstiness making her go too far more than once. Together, they had found a balance which worked, no matter how strange it seemed to her.

If anyone else asked this of Maze, she would have laughed, and probably killed them for their presumption. But her King was different. He had been different ever since she had found him, naked and burned, in the bottom of a crater on the far west side of Hell. The bones in his wings had been broken, his back torn open with fresh, bleeding wounds from what he had never told her was a whip, his face bruised like someone had been hitting him. He had lain there, shivering and whimpering, for weeks as she had looked over him, waiting to see if he would die. Other demons had tried to come into the crater and steal him from her, but she had fought them off. If he died, she would be the one to keep his feathers. If he lived, she would be the protector of the first piece of divinity to enter Hell.

And now she was. She protected his vulnerability, kept it hidden from the others. She helped him, when he was in one of these moods. When he clearly wanted nothing other than to return home, even though he knew he could not.

“My King,” she approached his throne, going down on one knee. He grunted his recognition of her. She stood and went to him, putting a hand over his hand. “Lucifer, it’s been too long. You need to snap out of it. Do you need me to help?”

That was always the first step. He needed to admit he needed help. That broke some damn of resistance he had. Only once he had swallowed his pride would anything work.

Lucifer looked down at her hand covering his, as though he hadn’t noticed her touching him. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet hers.

“I...” he hadn’t spoken for a while, and his voice was hoarse, “I just want...” to Maze’s horror and resignation, tears filled her King’s eyes. Yes, he needed this.

“Do you need me to help?” She asked again. A few seconds of silence passed before he closed his eyes and nodded. “Come,” she commanded, more gently than she would a lesser demon, but more strongly than she would ever speak to him in other circumstances.

She led him out of the throne room to his own chambers. Only she was permitted into his inner sanctum. Like the rest of hell, it was grimy and black, the stone walls covered in ash. But here, he had used some tiny part of his power to light the room. In the center of his bed chamber, towards the ceiling, there was a small, flickering star. It was warm, in contrast to the rest of his dominion, and it was bright. Maze liked coming here, to see the light. There was nothing else like it.  
She led him to the bed and told him to sit. Slowly, she took off his clothes. He was already barefoot, like they all were, so all she had to do was untie his dark, leather robe, and pull it away from him. His eyes were already downcast. She had probably left this a little too long, he wasn’t normally so docile.

“Lucifer,” she commanded with power she didn’t feel, “lie down on your stomach and get rid of your wings.”

He obeyed, unquestioning, and the wings furled up inside his shoulders as he lay down on his bed. Without her having to ask, he also pulled back his devil face, and his white, pristine angel form spread over his body.

“Good,” she said softly, ignoring how strange she always felt praising him, “you’re doing well already,” she ran a hand down his spine and he shivered at the words and her contact. “Tell me whats happening in that big brain you claim you have.”

“I...” his hands gripped tight on the sheets, “there’s too much noise here.”

“I know,” she ran her hand across his shoulders with enough pressure to bruise, but not enough to hurt, just as he needed it. This was a common complaint. She was so used to the screaming and movement that it didn’t bother her. But he hadn’t grown up here. He heard every rattle of chains and pained, anguished cry as loudly as if it were the first he’d heard. “What else?”

“It’s dirty. I’m dirty.” He closed his eyes.

“You haven’t asked me to clean your wings in weeks.”

“Water’s too cold.” That was another common complaint. He had told her, a few months after he had crash landed in Hell, that angels needed their wings groomed every week or so. That there was a field in heaven, full of shallow, warm pools, where they would all spend happy hours cleansing each other.

Maze thought the whole thing sounded disgustingly mushy, but her King got that wistful, sad look on his face when he talked about the field. She had taken responsibility for his wings when he had ascended to the throne, a few years after his fall. She took him to the waterfall, the only source of clean-ish water, shoved him under the harsh, freezing spray until he was soaked and spluttering, then combed swiftly through his wings, dislodging clumps of dirt, straightening and plucking damaged feathers. It only ever took about ten minutes, much more efficient than the hours the angels spent doing them in Heaven. He always looked so lost when she was done, as though the whole thing had been wrong and painful in a way he couldn’t articulate.

“We’ll do them tomorrow,” she said quietly, “you know it makes you feel better, even if you don’t like it.”

“Okay,” he rubbed his face against the sheets as though he was getting rid of tears. Maze’s heart sank. They hadn’t even started, and he was already crying. She had left this far too long.

“Noise and cold water. I’m sure that’s not the end of the list.” There was a long silence as he buried his face deeper into the sheets.

“Dark,” he whispered, his voice sounding wounded and muffled, “can’t see... can’t see my... can’t see the stars...” his hands clenched so tightly around the sheets that his knuckles went white. He had told her, once, that in the upper realms, the sky wasn’t made of black stone, but was an endless expanse of blue and black. And that he had lit the sky with millions of huge versions of the flickering star that lit his bedchamber. It was one of the hardest things for Maze to imagine, and one of the things he talked about least. She stroked his shoulder, her touch firm and grounding.

“Anything else?” Usually, these spirals of emotion were rooted in his family, and she wanted him to admit it before they started.

“No...” he said wetly into the sheets. Maze struck him, not too harshly, with her open palm on his thighs. He jumped, and turned his head to her in hurt confusion.

“You’re not telling me the truth,” she raised her eyebrows. Slowly, he lowered his head again.

“I don’t want to be here,” he whispered, “it’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“Do they... do they hate me so much that this is where they really want me to be?”

“I can’t speak for your family, Lucifer.”

“No one has come for me...” his voice broke slightly.

“They’re not coming. It’s been millennia.”

“They’re not coming,” he repeated. His shoulders were shaking slightly, and his arms went to wrap around his head as he pressed his face further into the bed.

“They’re not coming,” Maze confirmed, her heart, such as it was, going out to her King. He looked so... broken. But it was her job to fix it. To break him fully, and then build him back up in a way none of the others, including his family, would ever be able to do. Pride swelled inside her. She was the only one who could help him. The only one he would allow to help. “Are you ready, my King?”

He didn’t speak, but made a noise she recognized as consent. She went to the corner of his room and picked out a short, hell-forged leather flogger. Not enough to cause him real pain, that was reserved for nights much more enjoyable than this, but enough to make him feel it.

She ran the flogger down his back, and he shivered as it crossed the places where he kept his wings.

“You haven’t been yourself. You’ve failed to take command as you usually do, failed to heed your responsibilities as our king. This lapse has earned your punishment.” She stroked his shoulder with her other hand, and he nodded, pulling his arms closer around his head.

She raised the flogger over her head, and brought it down on his back. He jerked away, but made no attempt to move.

“Good, Lucifer, you’re doing so well.” He shuddered harder from her praise than he did from her hit, and it pulled at something inside her. Over and over, she hit him, until bruises and lines scattered his pale skin, and he flinched with every sound. After each hit, she told him he was good. That she knew how hard this was. That she knew he was trying.

She didn’t stop until she heard his juddering, pain-filled sobs, and saw his shoulder tense and shake with the effort of not breaking down entirely. She brought the flogger down again, hard, precisely over his wing joints, and he broke. He reached out for her, and she sat down near his head, allowing him to wrap himself around her, tears drenching her leather pants, his entire body shaking with pain and sorrow. It was a state he couldn’t allow himself to get to without the flogger’s encouragement.

“Kneel in front of me, Lucifer,” she said after a while, when his sobbing had rescinded somewhat. He obeyed immediately, and she ran her fingers through his soft hair. He lent forward and rested his head on her thighs. “Release your wings.”

Again, he obeyed, and the huge white wings appeared with a whoosh from his back. Gently, she stroked the feathers, starting at the join with his skin, and moving outwards. She knew it wasn’t a good substitute for his siblings, but she tried. She would have to try a little harder, she reminded herself.

His wings were dirty, and the downy feathers at his shoulders were matted. He pressed his face harder into her leg, his hands fisting in her clothes as he cried harder at her gentle touch. She kept one hand stroking his hair, and the other patting down his wings, letting her fingers get lost in the softness.

Eventually, he stopped crying. She was grateful for that. She hated his tears. But she also knew how much better, and stronger, he was after these releases. He would return to the brazen, cocky commander, who ruled his dominion with an iron fist. He would fight with her again. He would continue to fuck his way through the demons and the damned. He would eat, even if he didn’t like it. He would sleep, even though she had to keep guard over him.

She leant forward, her hand caressing his scalp, and whispered the words into his ear. Words that told him that this punishment, at least, was over, even when his ultimate punishment might never be.

“You’re forgiven.”


End file.
